


Ignite

by deltachye



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Awkwardness, F/M, Fluff and Angst, High School, Reader-Insert, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Teen Crush, Teen Romance, angsty reader pretends she does not care about said spider nerd but like lol we know the truth, spider nerd desperately tries to combat his overwhelming crush
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-03 17:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deltachye/pseuds/deltachye
Summary: [reader x peter parker]You got a lot more than you bargained for when you stood up for the weird nerdy sophomore guy. Between your own ongoing mid-life crisis and overwhelming apathy, you didn’t think you had the time to deal with some loser and his growing mountain of problems. So maybe you should’ve just thrown him under the bus and been on your way; but hey, who can resist that awkward, half-crooked smile?





	1. 1 - you defend pee-pee (penis parker) from an equally nerdy asshat

❝ _and i want you to love me the way you love to show me what it's like to be happy_ ❞

* * *

 

Who are you? Or, as you’re now starting to think of it, _what_ are you? To be honest… to be really, perfectly, deadass, straight teeth honest…

Not much, really!

You’re kinda just barely enough.

You weren’t originally from New York, and you really aren’t _from_ anywhere. Your passport says where you were born, but your first memory was you bouncing along in a stroller in the middle of Austin. Or was it Orlando? Chicago…? You’ve already seen all that the states, united, have to offer. And to be honest, you’re still entirely unimpressed. You can’t count the schools you’ve been to on all your hands and feet, even if you were to suddenly become a mutant and grow some more fingers.

It was a simple explanation. Your dad’s in oil and your mum’s in business, so you were the unfortunate ‘happy accident’ that got carted alongside their cash driven whims. Of course, as expected, there weren’t any brothers or sisters for you to share the sentiment with. Your parents were too ‘go-getter-esque’ to afford looking after any more heinous _kids_. Unfortunately, you didn’t inherit any of their ambition.

You’re a textbook MANT—‘Mysterious, Angsty, Neglected Teen’. Maybe you would be less prone to teen rebellion or total indifference if you weren’t so lonely all the time. You would’ve liked to say that you had a lot of friends, but truthfully, you didn’t. At this point, it was too exhausting to make friends only to say goodbye to them right afterwards. It hurt enough the first few times. So, yeah. At this point, it’s just easier to sit back and be alone for the ride.

It’s your last year of the great, golden ones: you’re finally a high school senior. Sweet sixteen. All those hunky boys in the tacky 90s high school dramas were going to be falling at your feet after a dramatic storyline with a lacking plot and poorly directed script! House parties! Sex in the library! Codeine Coca-Cola shots!

Again, you’re wholly unimpressed and underwhelmed.

Life just felt like a repeat of the eleven grades you’ve done before today, even though they were all different in some way. You spent a couple being homeschooled (because there aren’t a lot of schools nearby in an isolated town hanging onto the edge of northern Alaska), you spent a couple at drug-infused boarding schools, overly conservative ‘white trash’ prep schools, Spanish-Immersion public schools, and now… you’re _here_.

You would think that being one of the elite students at Midtown School of Science and Technology would _make_ you, right? Give you some direction in your life? It’s not much street cred, but it’s enough of a name to make people raise their eyebrows and nod with modest appreciation, like if you told them your shirt was actually Hermès and not from Target. The 8% acceptance rate was a daunting number, but you cleared the admission requirements easily. You made it into MSST. _The_ school for _the_ engineering American youth! Sponsored by _the_ brightest and best of _the_ United States of _America_!

Yeah, you weren’t exactly astounded or blown away by sudden thoughts of assuredness. Sadly, there was no abrupt realization of destiny for you.

You don’t have a plan of where to go or what to do. Hell, you barely know what you want to eat for breakfast, so you just don’t. Your dad wants to breed you into a tycoon—typical—and your mom wants you to do something along the lines of ‘freelance liberalistic hipster’. It wasn’t like you had any limits of what to choose. Any school would take you if your folks shook a big enough wad of bills on their asses. You didn’t even need their help, regardless; your SAT score was in the 99th percentile despite you napping through half of the Writing & Language section, you were a varsity lacrosse player, you dabbled in violin, and you had extensive records of volunteerism and community service. You were a perfect student, but you didn’t care about anything enough to run towards it. So, it looked like you’d just keep on drifting like you were until your feet hit sand. It wasn’t like you could burn out if you were never ignited by a spark in the first place.

Funny that a loser of a 15-year-old nerd who could barely keep his own voice cracks under control would be the thing to ground you and light the fire.

\---

It was your first day of school, but it wasn’t for anybody else. You’d already missed most of September, spending it on the West Coast in sunny California. It was quite a shock to be thrown into the middle of Queens with blistering autumn winds and people who constantly seemed to be ‘walkin’ here!’. Since you were late to the term, you’d totally forfeited any orientation, and any chances to meet people before classes began. As if it mattered—you already knew the drill by now. In senior year, the cliques and groupies were already well established, and you’d have no chance in trying to slot yourself anywhere into the hierarchy. You didn’t even want to account for the hyper-competitive nature of the ‘elitist’ student body. No matter; wasn’t like you were even going to try to in the first place. Your plan was to keep your head down and graduate so that you could finally find something to guide you in University. After all, everybody figured themselves out in university… right? Well, whatever. You’d just go with the flow.

If anything, a part of who you were was being very good at running from your responsibilities.

You’d already slept in until first lunch, so you’d accidentally missed your period one class anyways. The school campus was huge and you realized you were walking in circles, having passed by the same snogging couple in the front foyer for the fourth time. They must’ve had a lot of stamina to be sucking each other’s lips off like that for so long.

Despite being super lost, you didn’t really mind wandering the campus; it gave you an explorer’s feel as you meandered worn trails. It was one of the nicer places you’d been to, with that nostalgic old-timey brick architecture mixed in with vaulted glass and stainless steel. Very few people were eating lunches in the halls, so you figured that everybody was in the cafeteria—wherever the hell _that_ was. A multi-million-dollar private school and they couldn’t afford _one_ sign?

Eventually, you trailed behind a group of girls for long enough to arrive at what looked to be the cafeteria. There was a line of people being served and rows of crowded plastic lunch tables. You checked your phone for the time and counted another twenty or so minutes until the next bell. A table in the far back looked the sparsest, save for two boys huddled together at one end, so you made your way there and plopped down at the other. There wasn’t a need to ask if you could sit; it was clear that these two weren’t high up enough on the ranks to direct you elsewhere. They glanced at you and then away, noticing your white earbuds. You were thankful that they weren’t the nosy type to pester you for no good reason and pulled your phone back out to scroll through social media mindlessly.

A couple minutes went by and your Spotify playlist froze up, the stupid ad seizing your data and choking it out. Sighing out of your nose, you glanced up to your surroundings, bored out of your mind. The silence in your earbuds allowed you to finally pick out voices in the hum of the crowd, and you realized that somebody was very close to you.

“Hey-o, Penis Parker! You good?”

Your brow furrowed. You’d heard plenty of hurtful nicknames, but that was a new alliteration for the books. Your head turned instinctively and you saw a South Asian boy snickering loudly behind you. Naturally, your gaze followed the lines of guiltily suppressed grins and landed on the guy at the other end of your table.

This ‘Penis Parker’ guy didn’t stand out. He had finger-combed brown hair with matching eyes, a nerdy t-shirt that might’ve been cool in 2008, a plain hoodie, and a plain aesthetic. Easy bait. You wouldn’t have noticed him at all if you’d seen him walk past you in the hall. His mouth was set in a defeated grimace, but he didn’t seem too bothered, like this was routine—and that bothered _you_.

The large Asian boy at Parker’s side—probably Nerd #2—patted the brunet’s shoulder reassuringly. But it didn’t look like this asshole was ready to quit just yet. He walked past you to the other end of the table and stole the orange off of Parker’s tray, bouncing it in his hand like a softball.

“I’m going to toast your ass in today’s Mathlete competition. Just you wait.”

You couldn’t believe it. Somebody was being bullied over a _‘Mathlete competition’_. Was this what private schools were like? Nerds trying to do the most and roast _other_ nerds? Still, you really had nothing better to hold your interest and kept watching through a screen of hair.

“Sure, Flash,” Parker muttered flatly, obviously waiting for the other boy to leave. He stared at his tray determinedly, and Flash snorted.

“Just saying. Not like you got anything going for you in the stacks, you know, Pee-Pee Parker?” He opened his mouth to say something else or laugh smarmily again, but you’d had enough. If anything, you wouldn’t sit on your ass and be a witness to bullying. Especially to a pathetic looking kid like that who wasn’t standing up for himself.

“Maybe you call him that ‘cos you don’t have a fucking dick of your own.”

You were suddenly confronted with an uncountable number of stunned eyes. Apparently, nobody stood up for anybody in these places, and you suddenly became more visible than the green-ass big-ass Incredible-fucking-Hulk. Holding your ground, you twirled your earbud wire around a finger, calmly meeting Flash’s dumbfounded eyes.

“Who’re you?” he asked defensively, dark bushy brows furrowing with confusion as he struggled to scrape his dignity back together. His voice trembled with nervousness.

“[Name],” you supplied agreeably, figuring that a confrontation would be a decent way to kill your boredom.

“I’ve never seen you around before,” Flash continued, suspicious.

“I’m a senior. Just transferred from Cali.”

A couple of fascinated murmurs went around the building crowd. Flash’s forehead looked slick and you saw the reflection of fluorescent lights line up in rows on his sweaty skin.

“Uh, okay. You’re a senior, so you’ve probably got better things to do than hang around these loser sophomores, right?”

“No, not really. Oh—if you’re referring to _yourself_ as a loser sophomore, I’d have to agree with you.”

It was clear that your dry jibes were making this Flash kid uncomfortable, and he proved your theory right by shifting uneasily on his feet. He lowered the orange back onto Parker’s tray awkwardly. Latter kid had such an innocent, wide-eyed, slack-jawed _holy shit!_ expression that you couldn’t help but feel a little proud of yourself.

“Whatever,” Flash muttered, deciding to pick his battles with a more compliant opponent. You watched him and his cronies scuttle away like hurt crabs retreating into the rocks. Once he left, there were a few lingering gazes on you from curious bystanders, but they soon passed. With a small sigh, you were about to click your earbuds to un-pause your music when you noticed waving out of the corner of your eye. Parker’s friend was trying to get your attention.

“What?” you asked flatly, not bothering to take out your earbuds.

“You’re a transfer student? That’s like, super cool.”

“Ned, no! Don’t bother her!” Parker pleaded under his breath from behind, but Ned’s enthusiasm was not containable, and you realized that the boy had even scooted forwards to sit right beside you on the bench. You gave him an elevator look, judging his poorly matched outfit.

“My name’s Ned. Leeds. This is my friend, Peter Parker. He’s not really called Penis. That’s just Flash’s fault. He’s kind of an asshole. Hi. I’ve never really talked to an older girl before. Hi.”

“You said ‘hi’ twice,” you remarked wryly, glancing down at the quivering hand he’d extended. He wiped it on his shorts and flashed a nervous grin instead.

“Do you want to sit with us?” he asked, gesturing back to his and Peter’s trays. You looked behind him to the other boy, whose eyes had flashed with a _why did you do that you moron_ look. Unconsciously, you felt your lips curl into an amused smile.

“I’m already sitting down. Why should I move?”

“Oh. O-okay, we’ll move to you.”

“You’re kind of bold to be pushing this hard on a girl you just met,” you commented, scoffing and shaking your head. You turned back to your phone, waving absentmindedly. “Do whatever, I don’t care.”

“See, it’s kind of a long story, but I’m talking to you because we need a date to this party, and Peter doesn’t have the balls to ask anybody. Plus, if you’re a senior, you can probably drive, and like, taxi fares or Uber get _really_ expensive when you’re broke, so—”

Finally, you reached up and picked an earbud from your right ear, looking up with so much incredulity that Ned might as well have told you that he hailed from Asgard like that buff Thor guy on TV.

“Dude!” Peter howled, nearly having a heart attack in his seat. He spasmed frantically. “Dude, you can’t just _say_ that!”

“Why not?” Ned argued back sharply. “She’s nice. She insulted Flash, so she’s cool in my book.”

“You need a date?” you repeated, cutting off whatever Peter had to say back. “And you’re just going to ask me, whom you just met…?”

“Uh, no. I’m not going to ask you. Peter is. Right, Pete?”

“I…” He fumed for a second before meeting your gaze. His softly tousled hair was a touch of a shade lighter than his round brown eyes, and for a moment, you felt your heart skip when he locked onto you with such resolve. It chilled your blood to see a guy with so much self… _awareness_. You felt electricity shoot down your nerves with anticipation. He opened his mouth.

“N-No, I am _not_. I’m really sorry for him. We’ll leave you alone, like _normal people_. Right, Ned?!” He got to his feet, swinging his bag over his shoulder while grabbing Ned’s collar. The poor guy didn’t have enough time to get anything other than a “see you arou—!” out as he was dragged out of the cafeteria. You watched them go, Ned’s worn runners squeaking on the laminate tiles as he was hauled along at breakneck speed. Even once they were long gone, your eyes lingered on their forgotten, half-empty trays. You couldn’t help but feel that Peter’s face had been etched into your mind.

A tiny spark of curiosity lit up in your heart for the first time in a long time, igniting something that people called…

Living.


	2. 2 - you end up agreeing to this stupid shit

After that weird encounter yesterday, you didn’t think you’d run into Penis—er, Peter Parker or his sidekick Ned Leeds ever again. As it was made abundantly clear, they were ‘loser sophomores’, and the grades were strictly segregated at Midtown. Since _everybody_ qualified as an advanced student, there weren’t any younger kids skipping grades or older kids re-doing classes. Sports teams were sometimes blended, but as a member of the senior girls’ lacrosse team, you only really saw fellow classmates. You weren’t in any clubs, so no dice there. You probably wouldn’t come across those two ever again.

You wouldn’t have at all if they hadn’t freaking stalked you.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” you swore, nearly spilling your drink all over yourself when you felt somebody tap your shoulder from behind. Whirling around, you faced Ned’s eager face. Behind him was Peter, who was staring at his shoelaces determinedly.

“Dude, you scared the shit out of me.” Heaving for breath, you closed your eyes with relief. Ned shrugged awkwardly.

“Sorry.”

“How did you even find my locker?” you asked warily. Ripping an earbud out, you looked from boy to boy with narrowed eyes to sus out an answer.

“Oh, that? We just kinda asked around. [Name], right?” Ned didn’t extend a sweaty hand this time, but clutched both of his backpack straps like a grade-schooler. Your brow furrowed.

“Yeah…?”

“Cool! Do you remember us?”

“How could I forget?” you responded dryly. You looked at Peter, who was still scraping his toes against the floor and avoiding eye contact with you. “You get a date to that gig yet?”

“Nope,” Ned declared for him, a bit too proudly. “Which is why we’re here.” Lowly, he tried to whisper, but was still so loud that you heard him perfectly fine. “C’mon, Pete, just ask her!”

“I don’t…!” With a scowl, Peter seemed to remember you were standing right there, and bit down whatever he was going to say about you. You raised an eyebrow curiously.

“Look, I don’t want to bother you, [Name]. It’s stupid. It’s not even a big deal.” Peter shrugged his shoulders stiffly.

It seemed to be as simple as that. They’d go on their merry way and you’d head to your AP Calculus class and nap on. After all, you already promised yourself that you weren’t going to get attached to people, since you’d probably end up uprooting yourself in a couple months’ time anyways. And, after all, you really had nothing to do with loser sophomores. You should’ve been relieved and let them go, but—

“I’m free all weekend!” you blurted out, before you even knew you were saying it. The surprise on your face at your own statement seemed to be too obvious, and Peter knit his brow into a grimace.

“You don’t have to pretend to be interested. It’s fine, really—”

“No. No, I’m serious.” After settling your resolve, you began to nod. There was a tourney that you were not interested in training for, and you never really liked sitting in your room all alone anyways. You didn’t have any other extra-curricular obligations and you didn’t feel like studying, so you might as well entertain these clowns until it got boring again. “I’ll go with you. No biggie.”

“Y-You mean it?” Peter’s face was etched with the same wondrous awe as when you’d stood up for him in the cafeteria yesterday, and you couldn’t help but feel that his astringent _I don’t want to talk to her Ned you foolish fool_ attitude was just a façade after all. You nodded, shrugging nonchalantly, despite feeling a little bud of excitement in your heart.

“Sure.”

“Great! So we’ll see you tonight for prep so we can debrief you on the plan—” Ned spoke up, popping back in front with a big grin on his face. You started.

“The _what_ now?” you repeated. “You said this was just a party. What the hell do you need a _plan_ for?”

“Oh… yeah… I guess we didn’t tell you yet. It is a party, but we’re going to like, _wreck_ it. Y’know what I’m saying?” Ned and Peter exchanged sly smirks with each other and you stood to the side, dumbfounded.

“I _don’t_ know what you’re saying. Are you going to crash it or something?”

“No, not like that! We got invited. It’s Flash’s party, so we were thinking, to get back at him for being such a dick all the time…” Ned made a weird gesture with his hands that looked vaguely like an explosion. When he saw your confusion, he whispered behind a hand, “ _wreck_ it. Y’know?”

“You already said yes!” Peter butted in hastily, tripping over his own words before you could say anything. You merely stared back at him.

“What do you need _me_ for, then, if you’re just going so that you can prank this Flash kid?”

“Well… we can’t exactly show up with just _each other_. No offense, bud.” Peter shifted uncomfortably.

“None taken,” Ned replied, nodding straight-facedly. You let out a breath that you’d been holding and shook your head.

“You two are… something.” You raised your gaze. The boys’ shoulders had slumped forwards disappointedly, as if they were just starting to sense your reluctance. With another sigh, you reached forwards and clapped both of your hands down on their shoulders, shocking them back upright.

“I’m in. Let me know when to show up, kids.”

The bell buzzed and you all parted ways, with Peter’s apartment address newly added into your phone. As you walked to class, you couldn’t help but wonder if you’d gotten into something much more troublesome than it had to be. But you shrugged off your concern. Maybe what you _needed_ was to raise a little hell.

‘Little’ being the keyword. You didn’t bargain for raising the fucking entirety of hell, but _boy_ did it rain down on you.


	3. 3 - you should've talked about the weather instead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thx for the love this fic has gotten so far! i really enjoy writing it and making the reader gay for aunt may cos WOW. also shit's gonna hit the fan next chap so be warned :^

The drive to Peter’s place actually wasn’t very far from your own. It should’ve only taken twenty or so minutes, but evening rush hour was always a huge pain in the ass. As you sat your ass in traffic and twiddled your fingers on the wheel, you couldn’t help but wonder if you should just back out and go home. You hadn’t really gone to a party or actually _hung out_ with anybody in a while, and you were more than a little afraid of making yourself look like a goddamn fool in front of those two. You might have gone through with changing your mind, but you’d already made it, and turning back was impossible in the congestion. Looks like you’d just have to go through with it. You managed to wedge your dented Honda civic in between the two SUVs in front of the building, performing a very poor parallel park that earned you the honks of everybody waiting for you to painstakingly inch your car into the spot without smashing anything. Your tires scraped the curb a bit hard, and you were more than a bit crooked—but it was probably good enough, so you hopped out. 

You punched in the Parkers’ passcode apprehensively, checking your phone about a hundred times to make sure you got the numbers right. After having locked yourself into the confines of your own room for so long, your social anxiety was through the roof, and you could only imagine the shame of buzzing the wrong person. Luckily, the main door’s lock snapped open on the first try and you stepped inside the hall. Peter’s flat was on the upper floor and you climbed the stairs, feeling regret and anxiety weigh you down with each one. Despite that, you grit your teeth and kept moving forwards. It was really now or never—either you finally broke out of your shell now and did something to fix your depressing life, or you’d keep being the same sad sack of shit forever. _It’s fine_ , you told yourself over and over, even if you didn’t quite believe it. Better to have a shitty mental cheerleader than nothing at all.

After a deep breath, you raised your hand and knocked on the door three times. It opened a little while later. You’d expected it to be Peter, but instead, an attractive dark-haired woman faced you while looking very surprised behind her stylish glasses. You raised your eyes from her gorgeous body to her gorgeous face as she cocked her gorgeous head to the side.

“Oh. Hello. Are you the pizza delivery girl?”

“Uh… no?” you responded stupidly. You glanced behind her into the apartment, feeling your face warm. “I’m here for Peter.”

“Really? Oh, sorry! My bad. Hold on, let me— _Pete_! You’ve got somebody here for you!” She turned back to you, her grin nearly blinding you with its excellence. “I’m so sorry about that. Here, come on in!”

“Thanks.” You shuffled inside after her, feeling more than a bit inadequate beside such a beautiful woman. The door closed behind you with a heavy _click_ and thus, sealed your fate.

Unable to help yourself, you began to look around with muted fascination like you were in an art museum. You hadn’t seen other people’s places outside of shows on Netflix, and the vague messiness of a lived-in home was totally unfamiliar to you. You felt like an alien. Your many houses over the years had at least been consistent in that they were always impeccable, ripped right out of an IKEA catalogue without a single crease out of place. Your mom and dad were always out at work, and you kept yourself to your room. You’d never really had the experience of sweaters thrown across the couch or water stains tattooing circles on the coffee table. Real plants that were in dire need of watering were strewn about. Cold thermoses of forgotten tea joined the litter of dishes in the sink, like crowded ships at the port. Even more jarring was the number of photos and albums lining the shelves and walls. Your walls were either blank or decked out with awards of excellence—you didn’t think you even _had_ a family picture with your parents. Everywhere you looked, you saw signs of a family that lived here. Your eyes caught on a fat baby with a stupid grin and realized with a jolt that it was fetus Peter, proudly balancing upon a mattress. Fondly, you stifled a smile of your own. He hadn’t changed much at all.

“That’s weird, I wonder what’s taking him so long.” The woman apologetically turned back and shouted louder at a closed door. “Peter? _Pete_!”

“Yeah!”

You tore your gaze away from the photograph and saw him bursting out of a room, looking shocked to see you even though _he’d_ been the one to invite you to _his_ own place. His over-sized t-shirt was on backwards and he was wearing a pair of checkered boxers. _Glad to know that I’m worth dressing up for,_ you thought dryly. The lady had been crossing the living room to open the door and stepped back as Peter ogled you, puppy-dog brown eyes wide. You adjusted your bag on your shoulder self-consciously under his stare.

“You guys working on a project?” the woman asked concernedly, her eyes sliding from you to Peter like she was spectating the world’s most awkward tennis match. You opened your mouth to explain that you weren’t actually in his grade and was here to prepare for whatever ‘party’ he and Ned were dragging you to, but Peter already squeaked out a _yep_ before you could even try.

“Ned’s going to be here soon too,” Peter gushed, like he’d been stabbed and was bleeding out words. “English! You know how it is!” His voice cracked but he fought through it. He seriously looked so busted that you had half a mind to straight up ask if he was okay.

“That’s awesome, but don’t ask me for any help. I still don’t get Shakespeare. Anyways, our pizza should get here soon. [Name], right?”

“Y-yeah?” you replied, still taken aback by how frantic Peter looked. You nodded stiffly at the woman and she grinned in relief.

“Join us for dinner, would you? I know pizza isn’t much, but it’s _so_ nice to have another girl come by. No offence, Pete.”

“Oh, um—sure, okay!”

Peter had already stormed forwards and grabbed your arm to drag you into his room before you could finish. The woman waved goodbye with her cheery smile, and it was the last thing you saw before his bedroom door slammed shut in front of you. 

Peter let out a great sigh and just about keeled forwards, heaving for breath like he’d just finished running a marathon or something. What with the slick sheen of sweat on his forehead and his pathetic excuse of an outfit, you had to wonder if that was really it. It was either that or he was high. As fuck. You sniffed the air for traces of weed, but didn’t see anything like a bong or coke lines to confirm your suspicions. He didn’t seem the type, but what did you know about anybody’s skeletons? 

(If only you’d just noticed the red and blue fabric sticking out of his ‘skeleton filled’ closet.) 

“You’re acting weird,” you commented hesitantly, figuring that there was no point in skirting the gigantic elephant in the room. He straightened up sharply like you’d just tased him and whirled around to face you.

“N-no, I’m not!” he declared, acting weirdly.

“Uh… okay, sure. If you say so.” You figured that it wasn’t your place to press him, especially when you hardly even knew him. That, and you were a bit scared of pissing him off. You didn’t want to get him mad at you when he was the one that might become your first friend in… well, a while. Although you were still trying to mentally convince yourself that you weren’t lonely, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp wasn’t going to cut it as a replacement for social interaction and affection anymore. 

You took a quick survey of his bedroom. No place in Queens was any bigger than a box apartment, and his room was no exception, with things crammed in all corners to try and work with the miniature space provided. Still, it looked like the Parkers were pretty well off. You’d already been impressed with how spacious the living room had been, even though it was nowhere near as big as the lakeside manor you’d had in Seattle in ‘05. Blue plastic bins crowded his upper bunk. He had a couple of school things tacked onto the walls, like a cheer flag and his Midtown timetable matrix. His shelves and desk had been organized at one point, but had long since deteriorated into an overgrown jungle of half-finished notes, miscellaneous tools, dog-eared books, and other shit you couldn’t even discern. Still, it was kind of nice in its chaotic, disorganized mess. It was characteristic. It showed personality—something you didn’t really know if you were in possession of, yourself.

“Yeah, you’re uh… Early… Didn’t expect you.” He was still breathing hard, and you wrote it off as a post-workout thing, deciding to assume the best about him since he wasn’t spilling any beans. 

“Am I?” You looked down at your watch and swore, realizing that it didn’t match up with your phone. “Right, I keep forgetting to change my time zone. Shit, my bad.”

“Ned won’t be by for a couple of hours. I guess you’re already here though. So… if you want to just hang out…?” He shrugged. He seemed a lot less stiff than he’d been at school now that it was just you and him. Maybe he’d just been nervous with Ned’s company? You hadn’t thought that he’d be a gym rat, but maybe that was loosening him up. You nodded agreeably and pointed at the floor.

“Can I sit?”

“Oh, y-yeah! Make yourself at home. Sorry for the mess, I don’t really clean…” He darted around and picked a couple of wrinkled shirts and socks up off of the ground, like that’d magically make the cesspool of undone laundry and crumpled loose-leaf disappear.

“That’s fine, I don’t care.” You swept aside some unfinished o-chem homework and sat. Peter plopped down into a chair, dragging it in front of you. There was a bit of awkward silence as your eyes wandered the room, looking for something to talk about. You weren’t exactly good at this whole ‘socializing with other human beings’ business. Cite daddy issues and all that other socio-psychological development jazz.

“Your mom’s nice,” you blurted out, remembering the pizza invitation awaiting you outside that door. He blinked before shrugging. 

“Actually, she’s not my mom. My parents aren’t around anymore. They passed away.”

“Oh. Fuck, dude. Sorry.” 

_Awkward, much? Good job, [Name], you absolute bitch. You brought up his dead folks as a conversation kicker. Might as well have been better off talking about the shitty weather._

You awkwardly rubbed your knees and hastily tried to move off of the whole dead parents thing. “If that wasn’t your mum, who was she?”

“She’s my aunt. May. I’ve been living with her for most of my life.”

“Just your aunt alone?” you asked, very surprised. You’d been so used to the picture of a ‘perfect father with his perfect wife and their, uh, kinda mediocre kid’ family that it seemed way too unorthodox to consider a single lady raising her sibling’s kid by herself. He nodded.

“Yeah. I had an uncle—Ben—but, he uh…” Peter made a hand motion and you just could _not_ fucking believe what was happening. You closed your jaw, which was hanging down by your hopes and aspirations.

“Fuck,” you muttered again, rubbing your forehead ashamedly. This kept spiralling downwards. Next, he was going to be talking about his dead dog. “I’m so sorry.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I’m kind of used to it, actually. The dead uncle bit throws people off, too.” He grinned sheepishly, and suddenly, you were hit with a tide of awe and incredulity. Here was this lanky loser sitting in front of you in his underwear. He got bullied at school by an equally nerdy loser. But he had quite literally lost his parents _and_ an uncle, and he was still… okay. He was trying to make _you_ feel better. He was fucking _fine_. He was genuinely happy, despite it all. Here you were with a pair of not-dead parents, no real trauma, and you… _weren’t_ that. You sat around and waited for something good to happen instead of going out to make something good happen, and then you moped about how sad you were all the time when nothing good came by. Peter was simply _good_. Guilt ate at your stomach. 

“You okay?” he asked, noticing your worked-up expression. “I really am used to it, so you didn’t make me all depressed or anything by bringing it up!”

“I’m just… wow.” You couldn’t help an astonished laugh. “You’ve been through so much, haven’t you? But you’re still…” You waved your hand, having trouble trying to articulate your thoughts. He listened intently as you struggled to find the words. “You’re so _positive_ , and that’s amazing. Ugh, god, I sound like a fucking moron. I’ll just shut up now.”

“N-no, it’s cool! It’s cool.” He swiped his hand through his hair and you caught a nervous smile before he blocked it off from you by turning away. Muffled, he asked back, “you really think I’m ‘amazing’?”

“Well, yeah you’re fuckin’ amazing. I mean… shit, I don’t think I’d be able to even _function_ if I went through _half_ as much as you did.” You were still trying to wrap your head around how Peter could be such a normal guy after being shit on by life time after fuckin’ time. You hardly noticed him whispering to himself. 

“ _The Amazing Spider-Man_ …” he muttered under his breath, seeming distracted. He wasn’t listening to you. You raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

“What?”

“What?” He jumped and gaped at you. “Nothing! Just, uh, thinking about names for this, uh… D&D character. Yeah, he’s a chaotic good. A-Anyways, what about you? What’s your situation?”

“Well, I don’t have dead parents or a dead uncle, so you got me there.” 

He smiled sheepishly at that and you felt encouraged to keep talking. You hadn’t really expressed your emotional distance from your parents to anybody before. It was kind of sad, but mediocre sad, as in it was enough to make people feel a bit bad for you but not in the _yeah by the way my mom and dad and uncle are dead_ way. 

At first, as a kid, you’d thought it was totally normal to never have heard “I love you” from your mom or dad. Craft-time for Mother’s and Father’s Day had been very depressing for your teachers as you demanded to know what ‘I love you’ meant, because you’d never actually known. You’d always been a gifted kid, and you knew the words ‘verisimilitude’ and ‘ignominious’, but you couldn’t understand ‘I love you’. You never drew pictures of your family in messy crayon; it’d always been doodles about aliens coming to abduct you. (That warranted you a visit to the traditional child psychologist for weirdo fuck-up kids. You hated that old bitch.)

Now that you were older, you kind of understood _why_ they’d done what they did. They hadn’t been ready for you and you didn’t think they were now, sixteen years later and counting. It wasn’t in their temperament to be ‘nurturing’. It was a much easier option to let your kid hang out with hired nannies and stay home-alone than to take time off and hang out with them. You’d never had anything in common with them, either, then or now. You can’t exactly wheel your two-year-old’s stroller to your wine-tasting gig. They would be less than thrilled if you even dared to _think_ about asking them to sit through one of your lacrosse games or recitals. Besides, you didn’t even really like those activities. They were just resume boosters. Your mother and father loved their jobs more than anything else, and it wasn’t like you could change them. It was really too late to fix anything at this point, so you’d given up a long time ago. You didn’t exactly hate them for being unable to parent you the way they should’ve, but it was clear that you had not been a part of their plan, and they were very good at revising their life to exclude you. Not so much that you were actually neglected, but… enough.

“I’ve got a mom and dad,” you explained. “They work a lot, so I never see them. Their jobs are why we move a lot too. Oil & Gas. Anyways, I haven’t seen them all week because their schedules are out of sync with school.”

“Oh… sorry to hear that.”

“Thing is, I’m kind of okay with not seeing them. It’s kinda like we’re just housemates. I clean up after myself and they keep the fridge stocked. We’re not close or anything. At most, we just kind of talk about money or what school I’ve applied to. That’s it. I have no idea what they’re like anymore.”

“Wow,” he muttered when you were done, raising his eyebrows. “That sucks.”

Hearing it from this guy must’ve really meant something.

“This really turned into one big ol’ fuckin’ pity party, huh?” You sighed and let your head fall back onto his bunk-bed’s mattress. “I mean, a lot of people would think I’m the luckiest girl in the world for getting to travel the country so much and have so much freedom. I bought my car without even telling my parents I did. My mom handed me the key to the _cheap_ wine cabinet so that if I want to drink, it’d be the Costco shit. I have no curfew and nobody checks if I actually go to school or come home or not. But nobody ever understands how hard it is to just be normal and… live a normal life like this. With friends and stuff and people that really, legitimately care about you. I’m always waiting for them to tell me that we’re moving again and that I’ll need to get adjusted to a new school… so at least after this, I can finally live on my own in one place for a while.”

“Because you’re graduating?”

“Yeah. I’m getting the fuck out of dodge. Well… maybe New York isn’t so bad and I can stay here. With all that Avengers shit that happened, New York’s pretty up there. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to run into one of them if I stick around.”

“You don’t say,” he murmured, suddenly looking uncomfortable as he scratched his head.

“But I’m sick of being towed around like an inconvenience and then just… left there! Or forgotten about. It sucks. All I want is to settle down and find a place I can actually call home for once in my life.” 

You raised your head to gauge his expression, wondering if he was tired of listening to you ramble about your first world problems. After all, you were sitting here whining about how being a rich girl was so _hard_ , and how you wished you were a cool big kid all grown up. He had his arms crossed as he straddled his chair, and his chin rested on them as he slowly swivelled from side to side. He didn’t look like he was disinterested or concerned for your mental health, so you just shrugged to conclude your sob story.

“I mean… if you ever want to hang out after school, I’m cool with that. O-only if you want, I mean. I’m sure Aunt May wouldn’t mind. She keeps telling me to bring people over. And like she said, I don’t have a lot of girl friends. Th-that is, friends that are girls. So… yeah.” He kept tacking on justifications hastily, but you were so surprised that he was extending such a _nice_ offer that you let him talk on and on until he ran out of words to say.

“You really mean it?” you asked quietly. He nodded rapidly.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Hey, Pete—can I call you that? Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re a real nice guy. Amazing ‘n all.” You smiled and let your head fall back onto the mattress again, hiding your face. He bit down an embarrassed grin of his own.

“Thanks. Appreciate it, [Name].”

“Mhm.” 

It was nice to hear somebody say your name for once. The most you ever heard it was during morning roll call. It made you feel real. Actually acknowledged by somebody. You could’ve even said _loved_ , if you would ever figure out what that really meant. 

Maybe someday soon.

\---

You and Peter had the time to run down a couple matches in Overwatch and eat pizza with Aunt May (who was ecstatic at the idea of you visiting again), before Ned finally showed up. He looked surprised to see you early, too, but you didn’t feel the urge to explain your own mistake again.

“Dude, why aren’t you wearing pants?” you heard him ask Peter as you all walked back to his bedroom. “Did you and her…?”

“No, I didn’t have time to change because…!” Peter hissed back under his breath. You didn’t catch the rest of what he was saying, but Ned didn’t inquire any further. Maybe it was some bro code thing. In any case, the three of you were now sat cross-legged in what little floor space Peter had in his room and huddled together.

“Okay, so, here’s the gist. Flash is a Grade-A Dickhead. He’s not even just a dick to Peter, he’s a dick to everybody. Like, when we were in the washroom, he like, made his hands all wet and flicked it at my—”

“Got it,” you interjected quickly. “Flash is a douchebag.”

“So anyways, he invited us to his party because he wants as many people to come so that he looks popular. We were at a house party with him before, but it uh… didn’t go so hot.” Ned gave Peter a side-eye that Peter dutifully ignored. You watched their exchange, feeling a bit left-out. Something wasn’t being said here. Ned continued before you could bring it up, though, so you had to shut your mouth and let it go.

“This time we’re going to get him back for real!”

“’Kay, cool. What’s your master plan? Key his car? Light a bag of dog shit on his porch?”

“Whoa, nothing like that. Jeez, you’re intense.” Ned shook his head after shuddering emphatically. “We’re just gonna rig his DJ machine.”

“You’re… you’re what?” you repeated, hoping you had heard him wrong.

“Flash is really uptight and annoying about his DJ-ing skills. I mean, he’s actually pretty good—that’s not the point.” Peter leant forwards a bit as he explained. “Ned can hack into his set-up and have it play some pre-recorded tracks instead. Then, when Flash goes to actually play some music—”

“You’re not going to make it play fart sounds,” you breathed. Ned blinked and looked at Peter awkwardly.

“Okaaayyy, we’ll take those out.”

“Oh, man…” You finished rubbing your temples and shook your head with disbelief. Better to just go along with it than bask in the _lameness_ of it all, or else you’d go insane. “Okay, fine. You rig his DJ set-up. That’s all?”

“Well… yeah, that’s all we thought of. I mean, he’s a dick, but he doesn’t deserve anything that’d actually put him into trouble. He already got like, super-grounded because at homec—”

Peter thwacked Ned on the knee and he shortly shut up. You looked at both of their faces, and, seeing that Ned wasn’t going to elaborate, went ahead with your own question.

“Then what did you need _me_ for?”

“Uh… a distraction? Flash literally won’t let go of his DJ equipment, even though he’s going to be hosting. So we thought if we brought in a super-hot girl, he’d be so freaking _shook_ that he’d _have_ to go and ask nosy questions like the prick he is. You work too, I guess, because you insulted him and all and he’d probably be confused as to why you’re there.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Did you just imply that I’m _not_ a super-hot girl?”

“No!” Ned and Peter exclaimed at the same time.

“Y-you’re great! V-vous is… uh, très beautiful!” Ned blurted out, pale.

“Mauvaise grammaire,” you corrected in an eerily quiet voice that even made Peter squirm away from you.

“Yeah, no, we just meant that—yeah, you’re great. You’re _really_ pretty! Sorry about him.” Two thumbs up and an uncomfortable smile that made him look as if he’d stowed a secret frog in his mouth.

You sighed and let your head fall forwards into your hands. You couldn’t deny that hearing a compliment from Peter hit you a bit harder than hearing it from Ned, and you were actually just hiding your face. God, were you really rocking head over heels for this kid because he’d said you were ‘pretty’? What kind of pathetic loser were _you_? You had to get over this.

“I’m gonna not kill you for now, but just fucking try me. My lacrosse stick is in the trunk, and you don’t want to know how good my aim is.” You raised your head and saw them both nod anxiously at you. It was nice to have a semblance of authority over these guys. Even though you only had a couple months leverage, it made you feel in control of something. Then, you realized that they were waiting for you to say something. You raised an eyebrow.

“So, are you in?” Ned urged expectantly.

“Um… okay, fine. On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Peter asked nervously.

“You do _not_ program _fart sounds_.”


	4. 4 - you find that your loaded nachos are also topped with 'highly dangerous near-death situation'

You wiped sweat off of your brow, flicking it into the dead grass. After dutifully neglecting your training for the past couple of weeks, you weren’t in great shape, and these suicide drills were really rocking your world. Monte Jay Louis, your co-captain of the Varsity Midtown Girls’ Lacrosse Team, tossed you your water bottle as the two of you finished up the last lap.

“Thanks,” you gasped, uncapping it and draining water into your starved body. You glugged it down like an ugly fish. Monte, the living definition of Beauty & Grace, didn’t even look out of breath. She swished water around her mouth and spat onto the ground beside you, flipping her hair so that her butt-length box-dye red braid laid off of her shoulder. She looked over your shoulder and cocked her head.

“Hey. You’ve got a fan, [Name].”

“What?”

Monte gestured back over to the bleachers at the far end of the field. You straightened up to look and was surprised to make out _Peter’s_ figure. He was without Ned by his side for once, and didn’t seem to notice you noticing him. He was just hanging out on the bleachers, alone, headphones in as his hair tossed in the wind. Very few people stayed behind after school to spectate a boring practice like girls’ lacrosse—the trainers, stoners with nowhere else to smoke, parents waiting for their kids to finish up, and thirsty fuckboys. Peter didn’t fit into any of those categories, so he had to be here for _you_.

“I mean, yeah, I know him. What makes you say that?” you muttered defensively. You didn’t want to outright admit that you were his ‘friend’ or ‘party date’ since you hadn’t actually heard it from him yet. Too insecure of yourself, you weren’t about to start making bold claims to shit that wasn’t going to get backed up. You sure _hoped_ he thought of you as his friend, but you weren’t very good with social cues anymore. Monte noticed your sudden nervousness and raised a precisely plucked eyebrow.

“I saw him come by like fifteen minutes ago.” Her lips split into a nasty, million-dollar smile. “Got a crush, [Name]? I hear that kid’s like, a sophomore. Didn’t know you were a fuckin’ cougar.”

“Leave me alone,” you grumbled, shaking your head as she snickered. You still didn’t know the rest of your team very well, but as co-captains, you and Monte were forced to interact. You and she had gotten along pretty well with matching ‘fuck it’ attitudes. You figured that she was the closest thing you had to a friend these days, besides Peter and Ned. You probably would’ve liked her more if she wasn’t so anal about being the best at everything; you knew that she hated you for besting her at the sport she’d been training at for her whole life. The coach shouldn’t have made Monte split her authority with you, especially when you’d just waltzed onto the team a month late. But you were good, and the coach wanted another state championship win under her belt. You felt bad for Monte, you really did—but you were already used to being a disappointment. 

“Suit yourself. See you tomorrow.” She flung her frayed red duffel bag over her shoulder and made to walk back to the change rooms.

“Oh, I won’t be at practice tomorrow. I’m skipping. Again.”

“Fuck, seriously?!” Monte did a double-take as she turned back around to glower at you. “[Name], you can skip as much school as you want; but our tourney is next McFucking _weekend_. There’s going to be scouts there. If you haven’t learnt the goddamn plays—”

“Yeah, I’m sorry. Ask Dakota to step up as co-cap. I’m busy.”

“Hey, wait. You’re not going to that ugly-ass fetus’ party tomorrow, are you? That dumbass with the stupid-ass name—ugh, _Flash_?” she demanded sharply, hands on her hips. She sure was a smart-ass. Well, just your luck to attend Midtown, the elite school full of No-Shit Sherlocks and Captains of Obviousness.

“Beat my ass about it later,” you called back over your shoulder, jogging away from her chilly gaze to avoid it. You did feel a little bit bad about not doing your part to be a part of the team, especially since you’d already been selected as a co-captain, but this whole party business was much more interesting than committing to laps around soccer posts on the field. You made your way to Peter, who perked up when he saw you approach. He plucked out both earbuds and wound them around his phone.

“Hey,” he greeted eagerly. “I had some time before Decathlon, so I figured I’d just swing by and watch for a bit. You’re really good.”

You doubted that he knew a thing about lacrosse, but accepted the compliment nonetheless. 

“No problem, it’s cool. Decathlon, huh?”

“Yep. It doesn’t start until another twenty minutes, though. Ever since MJ is leading the team, she’s been pretty chill about people coming late.”

“MJ?” You had an image of Monte Jay Louis’ scowl and felt another guilty pang for ditching her when this tourney meet was going to be one of the most important of her life.

“Michelle Jane. She’s kind of weird, but in a good way. I think you’d like her.”

“Hm… okay. Guess I’ll just sit with you ‘till your Decathlon thing.” You hopped up onto the metal bleacher beside him. Setting your cleats on the step below, you rested your elbows on the step behind, and turned your head up to the faint sun. These New York autumns were colder than what you were used to and you shivered as a breeze rippled through your thin work-out gear.

“Can I ask you a question?” you brought up quietly, without looking over.

“Yeah, shoot.”

“Why’d you join Decathlon?”

“What? Oh.” He seemed surprised that you’d ask such a random question, but obliged. “I guess I just liked it. I’m really good with trivia and mental math and stuff, and it’s fun to compete and travel with your friends. Well, I guess Flash is on the team, which kind of sucks. But I like everybody else.”

“See, I never joined any clubs,” you mused. “I always just do what I know I’m already good at. I don’t know what I actually like. I’ve never really made a choice about whether or not to try something new because I always end up not doing it anyways. But do you ever think that it’s really hard to make a decision, so you just don’t, and you end up even more fucked than you would have been if you’d just made a choice? But you couldn’t choose, so you’re just always...” You waved your hands in the sky above you and let them fall by your side.

“Fucked.”

“I think I get what you mean.” He gave you a little look that you caught out the side of your eye, but you were too afraid to meet his gaze and see what he thought about your miserable ass. You were older than him; shouldn’t _you_ be the cool senior that knew what she was doing in life? The ‘mentor’ or sage with all this past experience and transcendent knowledge—some shit like that? But you kept getting the sense that this kid beside you knew a lot more about what he was doing or what he was ‘destined’ to do than you ever would, and it made you envy him longingly.

“But sometimes you just have to do the right thing, no matter how much it sucks,” he continued, also leaning back to look up at the clouds with you. Even though he wasn’t sitting right up next to you, he suddenly felt very close. “I actually turned down something that would’ve changed my whole life… I kind of regret not taking that offer pretty much every day. But I know that I did the right thing. At least, I hope I did. So, I think you’re just doing the best you can.” He offered you a shy smile and you cocked your head, turning away from the puffy white clouds above to meet his gaze. 

“What’d you turn down? A _‘super-hot girl’_?”

 _Shit_ , you thought to yourself without changing your facial expression. Your defence mechanism of making shitty jokes to diffuse any emotional connections kept kicking in at inopportune moments. You were about to take it back to try and restore the seriousness when he shrugged.

“Well, _you’re_ here, so…”

Silence. You blinked. Once. Twice. He blinked. Once. Twice.

“I’m sorry, that was so dumb! Oh my god. I’m gonna leave. Oh my god...” He’d already hopped up and off of the bleachers with freakish speed, like a goddamn spider skittering around to try and evade a rolled-up newspaper. You had to scramble after him to catch up.

“Wait!” you called out desperately before he could leave, hastily trying to lumber after him with your gear in tow. He stopped and turned, red-faced, looking golden as the setting sun washed over him.

“Y-yeah?”

“How do you know what the ‘right thing’ to do is?”

You felt like an idiot, standing there, turning to this boy for advice. Said boy, with glimmering brown eyes and a soft look of distant affection… was beautiful.

“…I can’t tell you for you. You just have to figure it out on your own.”

Another gust of wind blew past you, but this one felt a bit warmer with Peter’s gentle gaze on you.

\---

The night of the party finally came. You’d never felt like a Saturday had ever been longer in your whole life. You didn’t want to admit it, but you had so much anxiety that you couldn’t even sleep the night before. Lying there, you wondered what people thought of you as _the_ [Name]. Like how people would ask _straight haired Rose or glasses Rose?_ , or _the fucking bitch Serah or the boring Serah_? Maybe people didn’t think of you at all. This was really the first time you’d ever gone out, and you could only imagine what kind of party a rich Queens kid was going to throw.

You’d already triple-checked your outfit and make-up to make sure it was acceptably hot, but not overly slutty. After sitting your ass on YouTube tutorials for so long, you got pretty good at doing your own hair and make-up. You made sure that you were a couple minutes late this time around—not so much so that you were _late_ late, but fashionably late. Being early was for scrubs, and you didn’t want to walk into _Ned_ without pants. 

You were picking Ned up first because he was closer. You parked outside of his place and shot off a quick text, seeing him come out of his front door a couple minutes later. Luckily, he had his pants on. He immediately brushed aside empty McDonalds bags and crinkly water bottles to settle in the passenger’s seat. He did a double take when he saw you readjust your mirror and gaped at you unashamedly.

“What?” you asked defensively, feeling a blush rise to your neck. You fanned it off with a hand to protect your contour. He pointed at his face and drew a hesitant circle, still looking flabbergasted.

“You look… uh…”

“I don’t wear make-up to school,” you muttered sensitively. “So yeah, I look different. If I didn’t, what’d be the point?”

“You look amazing!” he blurted out, like he couldn’t hold the thought in any more. “Like— _wow_. Super-hot, [Name]. Pete—no, _Flash_ is gonna freak!” He laughed delightedly to himself and you couldn’t help but feel happy for him. If toting you around was going to fill the poor guy with the confidence he clearly lacked, you’d happily be toted. He deserved to smile like that a lot more. It kind of made you feel like you were actually doing the ‘right thing’, like Peter had said. Also, being known as the ‘super-hot [Name]’ didn’t sound so bad.

“Oh yeah. Pete texted me and said he was going to be kind of late. Aunt May’s taking him, I guess.”

“That’s weird. Aren’t I his date?”

“Looks like you’re all mine now.” Ned made creepy hand motions towards you and you had to laugh, swatting him off. There was a small grain of disappointment that you wouldn’t get to roll up to Peter’s place and see his reaction like you had with Ned’s. Still, you swallowed the discouragement and threw the car into reverse.

“Shit!” Ned freaked out and grabbed the door handle as you swore under your breath.

“My bad,” you apologized, hastily shifting into drive. “Still not used to this car. Or these roads.”

“Okay, yeah… that’s cool…” You saw him cinch his seatbelt up a little tighter and rolled your eyes.

“I’m a great driver!” you said, nonchalantly chasing a yellow after screeching through the intersection. “I’ve got licenses from like, three states bro. Chill out.”

“I am chill. Super chill. Super—right on red, turn right!”

Well, maybe it was a bit better that Peter wasn’t around to witness this horrendous excuse of ‘driving’.

\---

“Wow,” you whistled to yourself. There was hardly any room on the entire street, and cars had even crawled up peoples’ lawns just to park. Who even _was_ this guy? Had he called in the whole fleet of the nerd patrol?

You wedged your own car against the curb after cruising for a good ten minutes, killed the engine, and got out with Ned. He extended his hooked arm with a flourish and you took it, walking with him to the house. It was brightly lit and you vaguely saw rainbow lights cast up to the sky from behind the fence. The was deep, rumbling bass that seemed to shake the grass blades under your feet. Some party-goers lingered outside, shivering in the New York night with their red solo cups. They eyed you and Ned judgementally, clearly wondering how the two of you matched up.

“Peter here yet?” you asked. The door was open so the both of you stepped inside, and you were immediately barraged with such loud music that you felt like your heart beat’s rhythm was changing from within your chest.

“I don’t think so!” Ned yelled back, but you had to read his lips to garner any sort of understanding. “But the plan still goes!”

“What?!”

“Talk to Flash and distract him! I’m gonna do my thing!” He waved the USB stick in front of you and you figured that he was asking you to distract Flash so that he could do his thing. You nodded and gave him a double thumbs up. Ned turned around and waded into the crowd of gyrating bodies, and you sighed to yourself. It would’ve been nice if Ned had told you where Flash actually was, first. Asking people wasn’t going to do you any good if they couldn’t hear you. You noticed some people staring at you before their eyes fell down at your assets, and you stood up a bit straighter. Fine. You were already here; so, you might as well put an effort into enjoying yourself.

The house was ridiculously large. Fancy modern architecture like steel and bare concrete made the place look more like a decked-out parking garage than a home. You wandered the lower floor for ages and finally emerged into a room that seemed a bit sparser than the rest. You eyed rows of snack tables and marched up to one, grabbing a plate and loading it. Ned could probably wait for a couple of minutes; these nachos were definitely more important. You took back what you said about the host earlier. God bless Flash for providing these boujee toppings. 

You turned to resume your hunt to find Flash before somebody popped up right behind you, nearly making you spill your precious nachos all over their front. He danced back with a grin and you checked him over—typical fuckboy New York undercut, typical fuckboy shoes and shirt, typical fuckboy ‘I’m really a nice guy if you give me a chance’ face. He looked a couple years older than you, something like twenty. 

“Whoa, hey,” he said. The music was a bit quieter in this room, and you could actually hear him. “I haven’t seen you around before. You from Midtown?”

“Yeah,” you replied flatly, looking past him with total disinterest. “’Scuse me.”

“Don’t gimme that. Here, have a drink. On me.” He laid it on top of your plate and you hurriedly grabbed it before it could fall over and spill on you. It was a can of some pretentious hipster beer, and you shook your head.

“I don’t drink, but thanks.” You tried to give it back, but he put his hand on it, forcing it back to you with that same eerie smile.

“I think you should take a sip. You look a little thirsty.”

“…no, thanks.”

“I’m fucking serious. Have a good time.” He hadn’t removed his cold hand from over yours and you were seriously debating whether or not you should just throw it in his face. You might’ve if you were here alone. But you could only imagine what kind of torment that kind of action would bring down on Ned or Peter, if anybody ever found out that you were linked to them. This guy didn’t seem the type to stop at making phallic puns on somebody’s name. You couldn’t risk it.

You ground your teeth together but snatched your hand from his, and brought the can to your lips. You kept them shut and swallowed your spit liberally, making it look like you were having a mighty old chug, and wiped the foam from your chin.

“Thanks,” you muttered bitterly, turning to leave for real. The guy stopped you again, and he was really going to get nachos shoved up his ass if he kept this up.

“I’m Jordan. What’s your name, babe?”

Nevermind. You’d had enough.

“‘None of your business’. My grandma picked it.” You shoved your plate into his chest after that, deliberately tipping them so that some cheese ‘accidentally’ splashed across his ugly white v-neck. “Sorry, must be tipsy!” 

You slipped away as he howled with disgust, and quickly blended in behind some other people by ducking your head. After escaping into a new room on the far side of the house, you felt a little bit safer. You exhaled sharply. That had been close. You could only imagine what was in that can—and who else this Jordan guy had been tipping beer down the throat of. You’d thought that this was just going to be some annoying house party, not an actual place of danger. Worried, you decided that you needed to find Ned right away and get out of dodge. This wasn’t worth it any more. 

“Wait—Ryss? What’s wrong, are you okay? Oh my god, she’s not waking up. Maryssa? Hey, you—help me! Please, she’s not waking up!”

You turned and realized that this girl was screaming at _you_. Another was on the floor, totally out of it, her head lolling from side to side and her legs bent awkwardly from her fall. You instinctively dropped to your knees and looked down her chest—although her bra was unevenly stuffed with copious amounts of tissue, she was breathing fine. 

“Did she drink too much?” you asked grimly. Alcohol poisoning was a very real threat, and you’d need to call 911 immediately. To your surprise, her friend was still sobbing and shook her head adamantly.

“No, we just got here. She doesn’t drink or do drugs or anything like that, I swear!” 

Something about how shocked this girl seemed made you think that she was actually telling the truth. You narrowed your eyes as your mind began to race.

“You _just_ got here? And you were with her the whole time?”

“Yeah, she had like a sip of water or something from this guy at the front, and—”

Your head shot up to look for an asshole with nacho cheese stains on his shirt. _Are you fucking kidding me?_ you thought frantically, _this is actually happening right now?_ You couldn’t see in this dark-as-dicks hell-hole, and the music was still blasting you so hard that you could barely even concentrate. You would’ve missed Jordan entirely if he hadn’t accidentally met your eyes from far away. You saw them flash with panic and his tall figure melted away into the dark. 

“Hey, get your ass back here!” you shouted, to no avail. Some people had finally noticed you crouching next to these girls on the ground and began to murmur concernedly. You turned to the girl who was still cradling her friend’s head in her lap. “Okay, call 911. There might be something really wrong with her. Also, tell them that a guy might have drugged her and they need to send cops. His name is Jordan.”

“O-Okay…”

You got up and began to race after this dick head. It was too much of a coincidence for you to believe in his innocence. Pushing past the masses of confused party-goers was a pain in the ass, and no amount of screaming got you past them any faster. At this rate, he’d be long gone—!

You broke past a kissing couple and immediately felt something cold wrap around your hand. The grip was rough and tugged on you so hard that you nearly felt your shoulder pop out of its joint. Screeching with pain, you fought against whoever had grabbed you. You just barely caught a glimpse of Jordan’s face before he whipped you around to face away from him, pinning your arm to your back. Something hard pressed into your back, and it was the first time that you wished that it was actually a dick. The metal was cold on your skin, and even though you were still being deafened by bad deep-house music, you could almost hear the gun click. He bent down and whispered into your ear menacingly, making you shiver.

“Move anything, say anything, fucking _look_ at anybody—and everybody here dies, not just you. Move it.”

Maybe now, you were going to be known as the _dead [Name]_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spacing is weird in this one for some reason bcs it won't transfer from my word doc properly??? hopefully i've edited them all out. so pls lmk if there's no appropriate paragraph break after dialogue since it's screwing with quotation marks i think


	5. 5 - you figure that even clark kent had a better disguise than this geek

Well, this is what you get for trying to be a good person for one goddamn second. No, not even-a smart person would've just stayed with that knocked-out girl and talked to the police. Who fucking gets up and books it after a suspected drug dealer? Now there's a gun at your back, and it's nobody's fault but your own. Yeah, this is what you get for being _stupid_.

You desperately wanted to lash out or kick or scream or even give somebody a covert _hi help me please_ look, but you couldn't risk Jordan's threat. You couldn't allow him to open fire into these innocent people because of you. He might not have been serious, but this wasn't a bluff you were willing to challenge. You wanted to negotiate with him, somehow-plead that you hadn't told anybody and wouldn't-but the way he was driving the cold muzzle into your spine made you realize a long time ago that he wasn't the listening type. Everybody was too engrossed in the party to notice you staggering along, and anybody looking on would've probably just assumed that you had too much to drink. This was the end.

He was steering you to the back door, which opened out into a dreamily lit pool. You had been holding your breath for too long and inhaled shakily when you put a foot outside, a shock of cold air raising goosebumps on your exposed skin. The water made blue light sparkle and dance along the ground, and it could've been romantic if this guy wasn't threatening to kill you and everybody else in the near vicinity. Jordan's breath was hot on the top of your head.

"Walk with me. And keep your fucking head down."

"Okay…"

You were very close to making it a fair few yards away from Flash's place when somebody suddenly shouted your name. It made you jump, jostling you closer to your kidnapper. You gasped when Jordan shoved the gun into you and whipped you around.

"Who is that?!" he hissed, hugging you tight to him and the gun still concealed behind your body.

"It's Ned."

Ned was waving at you impatiently. Seeing that you weren't coming any closer, he jogged out to you and Jordan and Jordan's fucking _gun_. Your eyes flashed at Ned to try and warn him away, but-bless his kind soul-he didn't sense that anything was wrong, and merely gave Jordan a small frown.

"I was looking for you everywhere!" he said to you exasperatedly, before looking to Jordan again with the same _ugh_ expression. "Who's this?"

"Yeah, name's Matt. I'm [Name]'s boyfriend. We're on our way home, so you should just go back inside." Jordan sneered down at Ned and kept his arm wrapped around you tightly. The gun shifted and you swallowed thickly, trying your best to hold down the tears of fear.

"Oh… okay… I guess…? But [Name], what about the… the uh, _lan-pay_?"

"The wh-what?" you stammered, your heart racing with so much adrenaline that you couldn't even really see straight, let alone decipher Ned's secret code. You didn't dare to try any more signals with him, but hoped that something would click-maybe the fact that you'd never talked about this 'Matt' before, or your current facial expression of 'help me help me help me'-and Ned would realize something was up.

"Y'know… what we talked about before…?" Ned made weird expressions with his eyebrows. You really wished that you'd run into somebody with a keener sense into reading people's body language, especially if said person was currently being held _hostage_.

"What did you talk about?" Jordan snapped suspiciously. You flinched as the gun shifted on your skin.

"N-nothing."

"Are you okay, [Name]? You don't look so good." Ned cocked his head with mild concern.

_Instead of insulting me, give me a fuckin' hand, Ned!_

"Oh, her? She started feeling pretty sick so I'm just gonna take her home. See you, _Ned_." Jordan began to pull you away again, but Ned wouldn't let go of it and took another step towards you. His brow was furrowed with concern and you were pretty sure that something had finally sparked in that big brain of his.

"I think you should let her go," Ned said, his voice wavering at first but growing with confidence as he continued. His pudgy fists were balled up tightly, probably to hide the fact that they were shaking. "She's not your date tonight."

"Ned-" 

You tried to stop him, but Jordan had already begun to laugh in disbelief.

"Oh, yeah? You tryna warn me that my girl is hoeing around? Thanks for the tip, fatass."

"Hey, don't talk about my friend like that-whoa!"

"Please wait-no, don't-!"

Ned had reached forwards to shove Jordan off of you, but things had blown up from there. The gun was exposed in the night air and was now out of your back and stuffed into Ned's chest. Jordan's other arm had hooked around your neck. He forced you to bend over awkwardly so that he wouldn't end up choking you, even though he was trying his hardest to. You clawed at Jordan's arm, sucking in gulps of air.

"Don't shoot him!" you screamed, hoping to draw people's attentions now that it seemed like it was too late for inconspicuousness. Your high-pitched shrill seemed to roll like thunder in the house's valley-esque yard. "Please don't, I'll do anything-!"

"Shut up, you goddamn cunt!" The gun returned to you eagerly, and this time it kissed your temple. His arm tightened around your throat. You squeezed your eyes shut, unable to do anything but scream as loudly as you could. All those times you had jokingly said that you wanted to die felt cruel, because it was suddenly happening, and you _didn't_. You didn't want to die; not like this, and definitely not now. Not when there was still so much to actually _do_ and see and feel. Blood and vitality raced through you, as if your body was already giving up and trying to savour the last of life before it was gone. You couldn't bring yourself to really believe that it was happening, but the gun's muzzle felt like it was searing a hole through your skin. Your head felt blank and you saw nothing. This was where your life was supposed to flash before your eyes, right? But nothing happened. You expected something, _anything_ to happen, like a gunshot or pain or even the disappearance of everything real. But when nothing at all changed, you were… confused.

"What the fuck?!" Jordan yelped, and you realized that you were still hearing things and not _dead_. You noticed that his arm had slipped from your neck and you opened your eyes. Lights seemed overly bright, blinding you-in your confusion, you heard someone shout your name. Suddenly free, your entire body seemed to seize in order to repel you as far away from Jordan as possible. Without even seeing, you flailed clumsily towards any direction that wasn't due Jordan. Ned caught you in his arms and you looked back, seeing Jordan pinned down in a stringy white substance that looked kind of like hot glue.

"What the hell is this?!" Jordan continued to bellow, frustrated, looking as if he was going to pop a vein in his forehead as he tried to pull his leg out. His gun hand also had some of that hot glue stuff on him, masking the weapon underneath it.

"[Name], are you okay?!"

You thought Ned had spoken, but it wasn't Ned's voice. From the sounds of it, it was like somebody was yelling down at you. God? Well, you doubted He was down for some one-on-one chats right now. You followed your instincts up and gaped openly as a red-and-blue clad man squatted on top of Flash's roof. Angular white eyes gleamed in the moonlight, contrasting against the rest of his murky his silhouette.

"What the _fuck_ …?" you whispered, your voice lost from screaming for your life. Jordan was howling the same thing, sharing your confusion. The weird guy on the roof suddenly looked around and then jumped away before you could get any confirmation as to what was happening. Immediately after, red and blue lights flooded the driveway. Police or ambulance sirens sounded distantly like lost whales in the sea. You abruptly remembered crouching inside, the floor hard underneath you in the memory.

_"Call 911. There might be something really wrong with her. Also, tell them that a guy might have drugged her and they need to send cops. His name is Jordan."_

_"O-Okay…"_

Cops piled into the yard like black ants after that. Even they weren't even able to tug Jordan out of that glue-like stuff, and had to dig him up out of the ground just to cuff him. Your memories weren't very clear after that-you'd been too stressed, and your brain had blown a fuse and blanked out. So, all you could really remember was Ned rubbing your back as a blanket was draped over your shoulders. That, and Flash's horrified expression as he came out to see what the hell was going on. Poor guy. You wished that Ned really _had_ just put fart sounds onto his DJ kit.

\---

You couldn't help but keep looking up to the spot where that guy had called down to you. The voice echoed in your head, but it was all muddled in your memories, so all you could clearly remember was what he'd said. How had he known your name? How could he have known _you_ , if you had never seen _him_ before?

"Am I crazy?" you pleaded with Ned abruptly. "You _had_ to have seen him too, right?"

"I-I mean, yeah. That was Spider-Man! He was the one who helped us."

"Spider-Man?" you repeated, your brow furrowing with confusion. "What?"

"Oh right… I forgot that you aren't from around here. Yeah, Spider-Man's like, the newest super hero! He got recruited by the Avengers but he shot them down since he's so freaking awesome. We're like, super tight, because he helped save my friends in Washington and all. There was this whole incident with the elevator…"

Ned was rambling, something he seemed to do when he was nervous. You didn't blame him; he'd nearly got shot tonight. Unfortunately, you didn't have the patience to deal with that right now. You cut him off with your own question.

"Where did he go then? Is he like that uh… freaking Daredevil guy from Manhattan that I read about? Vigilante type that beats up bad guys for the cops?"

"No way!" Ned protested, suddenly very adamant. "Spider-Man's not like that at all! He's a good guy. Without him, Queens would be ten times less safe. I sure hope he's okay though."

"Yeah, me too," you muttered distantly, remembering the chill you'd got when you'd met the eyes of that mask.

"You didn't see where Spider-Man went though, right?" Ned asked anxiously. "Because I haven't heard from Peter all night, and I'm getting worried."

"No, I didn't. He kinda just like… I dunno, shot off. I have no idea where he went." The second part of Ned's statement made your brow furrow and slowly, you looked up. "What does Peter have to do with this? He wasn't even here tonight. Which is a good thing, but…"

Ned might've gotten away with it if he'd just changed the subject and kept his shit together. But maybe the whole 'almost dying' bit had screwed with his logical side a bit too much, and he merely gaped at you with a big _oh shit_ expression. What could he possibly be thinking 'oh shit' for? You were confused, at first, but it clicked in your head with clean easiness. 

"Ned," you hissed under your breath with a warning tone. "You're not telling me that… this Spider-Man guy… is frigging _Peter_ , right?"

"N-No, of course not! Why would you think that? Spider-Man's real name is, uh… P-Paul! I mean, we're pals, so… yeah! Paul and I go w-way back-"

"Oh my god," you whispered to yourself, closing your eyes and letting it fall back against the ambulance wall. Peter Parker, a kid you'd just met, dressed up as some Spider-Boy dude thing and fought crime in a suit. It was all too fucking much. Next, you'd be playing Go-Fish with fucking Batman. "Oh my _god_."

You were only a quarter way through your fifth mental breakdown of the night when Ned's phone suddenly rang. He screamed like a little girl and jumped, making you jump in turn. He apologized and sheepishly answered his phone, looking relieved to have a distraction from your seething. You watched his expression, and saw it grow from concern to yet another wide-eyed wide-mouthed _oh shit_ face.

"What?" you asked testily when Ned lowered it, staring at you with a slack jaw. " _What_?"

"Peter's in jail..." 

You looked down and saw Ned extending the phone to you.

At this point in time, you should've paused to recollect your thoughts and make the right choice. It was because you had agreed with their little plot in the first place that you had all this shit happen to you. Yeah, it wasn't their fault, but you would've never ended up in this situation if you'd just told them to stick it. After nearly dying tonight, you deserved to go home and take a fucking bubble bath. You deserved to say 'no thanks' and be on your way. Only, your 'way' was very lonely, and…

_"Sometimes you just have to do the right thing, no matter how much it sucks."_

Warily, you took the phone.


	6. 6 - you bust peter out of the slammer but detective right-all-the-time doesn't even give a flying fuck about that

“Hello?” you answered warily. The person on the other end choked on their spit grossly, their coughs crackly. Definitely Peter Parker, then.

“ _[Name]_?” he stammered. “Wh—where’s Ned?!”

“He’s fine,” you spat, figuring you had more important topics to cover right now. No offence, Ned. “Now let me get this straight— _you_ run around in a motherfucking spider costume and now you’re in fucking jail?!”

“Well…!” He hastily got a lot quieter, and you imagined him bending over the phone as he whispered conspiratorially. “When you put it that way, it doesn’t sound that great.”

“ _Why_ were you arrested? Don’t tell me it was disturbance of peace because of your weird ass costume. You didn’t hurt anybody or something, did you?”

“No, of course not! I had to ditch the suit so that I wouldn’t get found out… but uh, yeah. Trespassing. I crash landed in some rich guy’s backyard and there was this huge dog and… um, nevermind.”

He almost seemed to sense your ‘I don’t care’ glare through the phone and shut up. You sighed again, pinching the bridge of your nose as if it would stave off the migraine building up at the base of your skull.

“If you’re this Spider-Man guy with a super powerful suit and powers and shit, then why the hell can’t you get yourself out of jail?”

“I had to ditch the suit because of the dog, and—ugh, nevermind! Long story short, I need bail and a ride. Plus I really don’t feel like calling Aunt May and getting grounded, so…”

The connotative lead off wasn’t lost and you and your brows arched sharply.

“You don’t want _me_ to pose as your aunt?”

“I was actually gonna ask Ned to be my Filipino step-dad, but… yeah. I’m really sorry, [Name]. I’m so sorry. But Mr. Stark’s super busy and—”

“Do you mean Mr. Stark as in Mr. Fucking _Ironman_ Stark?” you interjected, giving zero shits about etiquette and not interrupting people’s sentences. His gulp was almost audible.

“…yeah.”

“Holy shit,” you breathed, closing your eyes once and for all so that the blinding ambulance lights wouldn’t make you sick. “You’re a knockoff superhero in cahoots with an Avenger.”

“Well, they actually asked me to become an Avenger but I said no—nevermind, you probably don’t care. Anyways I really need you to do this for me, [Name]. I swear I’ll make it up to you.”

You opened your eyes and looked to Ned, who had been leaning in to try and eavesdrop. He sat back sharply, caught in the act.

“I-I can’t go. Sorry, but if my mom finds out what’s happening here, I’ll be grounded forever, so I need to get home right away.” Ned waved his hands apologetically. You wanted to be mad at him, but you couldn’t. If your parents gave a shit about you, they’d probably want you home after hearing that you’d nearly gotten shot up by some fuckboy drug dealer, too. Thing was, they were probably off in Macau doing business over dimsum, and you were the only one here with wheels.

“Peter,” you said, clearly but slowly. “You. Fucking. Owe. Me.”

“What? Oh! Y-yes ma’am! Yes, thank you!”

The gratitude was enough to quell all the exasperation in your heart, but he didn’t need to know that. You hung up pettily without a goodbye and slammed the phone down onto the ambulance floor, jumping when Ned squealed in horror.

“My phone!” he cried tearfully. Oh yeah, it hadn’t been yours. And you had forgotten to ask where Peter even was. Oops.

‘Oops’ was becoming a big ol’ theme in your life.

\---

You’d made Ned do the shameful “where u at” text, not wanting to admit your own faults. The phone pinged back quickly, which surprised you; you’d thought that the police would confiscate Peter’s phone for sure if he was detained. Ned figured that Peter had either hid it or had some super cool tech from Mr. Stark that allowed him to text from his brain by connecting to secret SHIELD satellites. You guessed that the cops just hadn’t searched Peter that thoroughly. A scrawny white kid like that wouldn’t attract much suspicion. 

Despite everything that happened, you agreed to chauffeur Ned back home. It’d be too much of a dick move to make him take the bus or an uber, especially since it was nearing one in the morning. After all, none of this was actually his fault, and you’d just be a bitch to force any blame onto him.

You watched as his mother opened the door, looking confused when Ned immediately hugged her tightly. You tapped the steering wheel with your finger, a soft smile reluctantly coming forwards to your face. Of course he’d hug her like he’d nearly just died. He’d been at gunpoint tonight, too. He’d probably been scared that he’d never see his mom ever again or die without telling her that he loved her a last time. Then she began to yell at him, loudly, throwing in a foreign language to boot while smacking her son in the arm—that was your cue to take off quietly. Rest in peace, Ned Leeds.

Apparently, Peter had fucked up all the way in the borough of Brooklyn. It wasn’t that far of a drive out of Queens, seeing as Flash’s house sat close to the border anyways. Even though you’d already practically completed your fifty-state tour of the Great Americas, you hadn’t spent that much quality time in New York. At most, your parents had only taken you along for their business trips, and you’d never lived here until now. The roads were especially unfamiliar in the dead of night, and you crept along while squinting at your Google Maps. Luckily, only a few yellow cabs were patrolling the streets of the city that never sleeps, so the angry honking was kept to a minimum. 

Finally, you made it to the address Peter had sent. Ned had really over-dramatized the whole situation. It wasn’t a barbed-wire wet dream like he’d made it out to be, but merely an every-day police centre. The aged brick was lit with orange-yellow lamps, and one or two uniformed cops went in and out of the doors as you parked and unbuckled your seatbelt. You hadn’t been nervous on the quiet drive, but sudden anxiety shot through your heart. What were you going to say? You didn’t exactly have an ID that said you were May Parker, assuming that was even her surname. Would the NYPD really let some random girl spirit somebody on hold away like that? Shit, you really should’ve thought this through.

Worst case scenario, you got tossed into the cell next to Peter for fraud. You let out a small exasperated moan and then looked at yourself in the rear-view mirror. Your hair, make-up, and outfit kind of put you in between the age range of slutty sorority girl and alcoholic aunt that tried too hard to relive her youth. Good enough, right? Fine; you could do this. Peter needed you to. That thought spurred you to action and you finally got out of the car, albeit with slow and reluctant movements.

You kept your head down and tried to avoid eye contact with anybody as you walked in. The gigantic CCTV camera seemed to cock its mechanical ‘head’ at you, but nobody leapt out of the bushes to shout ‘halt, imposter!’. So far, so good. The lobby was absolutely dead, save for a fake plant in the corner. There was a lady at reception and you walked up with wobbly knees. She glanced up at you, narrowed her eyes judgementally, and then broke out into a huge grin before you could even say one word.

“Girl, oh my god! I _love_ those lashes! Where did you get them?”

You completely lost your whole _give me back my nephew you crooked ass pigs!_ spiel and stuttered.

“U-Ulta…?”

She gasped with delight, clapping her hands together to show off unbelievably long and sharp fake nails. “Wow, seriously? They look _so_ high-end! Like, definitely Artémes or something. Oh my god, ‘kay. Can I take a pic for later? I _need_ those.”

“Um, okay…” 

Stunned, you stood stock-still as she leant over her desk and took a picture of you with her shiny rose gold iPhone. Looking satisfied, she sat back down and twirled her hair around her pinky.

“Okay, sorry about that. Things just get _so_ boring during the graveyard shift. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to pick up Peter Parker?” Your voice shook a bit with your hesitance, but she didn’t even seem to notice, too busy editing her new snap on her phone. Her nails clacked against the screen and she nodded, pointing up with the other elegant hand. Sparkly Tiffany bracelets dangled from her wrist.

“Crimes and Special Victims is Fourth floor. Just keep going up ‘till you can’t. Won’t miss it.”

“…thanks.”

“Thank _you_!” she chirped, and you shuffled away, glancing back to make sure she wasn’t watching you. She seemed too busy taking a selfie with the dog filter. All right, then. You couldn’t complain; that could have gone a lot worse. 

You dived into an elevator and slammed the doors shut so you could take the car alone. You carefully pressed the bolded four, as the reception girl had said. It had a crooked sticker that read CRIMES AND SV, so you were on the right track. You checked your hair in the warped metal door, feeling your body elongate and then shorten. The elevator dinged pleasantly, and you stepped out, seeing a couple of people bustle around an office space. Even though it was definitely two or something in the morning, there were still a significant number of people working. You were penned in to a waiting area by a short fence and shuffled your weight like a nervous kid waiting to ask to pee. Nobody seemed to notice you and you didn’t really want to step out of this ‘safety’ zone. Right as you were close to giving up, somebody let out a yell at his desk and fell backwards out of his chair, startling you. Nobody else seemed surprised and ignored him entirely.

The guy scrambled to his feet, fist pumping in the air. He was suddenly racing right towards you but looked past you, towards the elevator. You side stepped him as he hopped over the gate, but he finally seemed to notice you then and screeched to a stop.

“Hey, what are you here for?” he asked, breathing hard. An NYPD detective’s badge was slung around his neck. 

“I-I’m here to pick up Peter Parker?” you repeated from downstairs, since it had worked that time. You winced at the uncertainty in your own voice, but the detective didn’t even seem to notice.

“Oh! Him? Right, yeah. Just take him. He’s in the break room. Nice kid.”

“W-wait!” you said, before he could begin to take off again. You weren’t sure why you were testing your luck and asking questions when he’d just given you a free pass, but things sounded so easy that you couldn’t help but wonder why. “What about bail or… something?”

“Nah, we’re tight! It’s all g, homeslice. But I’ve got a lead on this _sick_ murder case and I’ve got to go, so have a nice night. Drive safe, ‘kay?”

“Uh… okay. Thank you?” 

He blasted off after that, sliding into the elevator and letting it close on his face with another triumphant whoop. None of the other cops looked up, and you guessed that it was really going to be this easy. Okay then; no more complaints from you. It was a lot better than having to try and explain why a sixteen-year-old girl was paying bail on some guy with a credit card that had no max on it.

You took a right after seeing a plaque that read ‘break room’. You shuffled into the open door and then spotted Peter with his feet kicked up leisurely, a Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate in one hand as he played Temple Run with his phone in the other. Your jaw dropped. All that worrying, all that anxiety, and he was just hanging out here like somebody’s little brother.

“[Name]!” he said, sitting up and lowering his feet when he saw you come in. “You made it—”

“What in the _fuck_?” you hissed, as not to be heard by anybody outside. You stormed forwards, slamming a hand down on the table. “You’re just… _chilling_?!”

“Yeah, Detective Peralta was a really nice guy. He let me go without bail or charges anything.” Sheepishly, he stood, shifting his weight awkwardly before you. He was a bit shorter than you now since you were in heels, and seemed to feel even more emasculated, shrinking back. “Thanks for coming.”

“I—just—! Ugh…” You sighed, closing your eyes. After seeing him, a flood of relief swept through you, burying the fears you didn’t even know you had until you saw him. It was like how childhood memories don’t seem to exist until you suddenly remember them by catching a whiff of some scratch-and-sniff chemical dill smell. Meeting Peter’s eyes after all that apprehension made you remember something—a feeling that you had forgotten for a very long time.

Love.

“Let’s go home,” you murmured, accepting defeat and exhaustion onto your shoulders. You even yawned, unable to help it. The shock and adrenaline was finally wearing off, leaving you busted as hell. You gestured to the door. “I’m sure your Aunt’ll be upset that you’re out this late.”

“What about you? I-I know I already caused you a lot of trouble, so—”

“No, they won’t mind. Daddy never loved me much, but he gave me a credit card, so that’s pretty much the same.” You shrugged, ignoring the confused expression on his face. “Come on. It’s going to be a long drive back into Queens.”

“…okay.” He walked with you, but then hesitated. You looked behind you with a furrowed brow, not wanting to nag him to move his feet for the second time. You realized that his pale skin was reddening and your eyebrows shot up with concern.

“Whoa, Pete, you okay?”

“Y-yeah, I’m great! It’s just—you look… n-nevermind. Let’s go.” He rushed off after that, throwing a hood up over his head as if that’d remove the awed expression from your memories. You touched your own cheek, feeling it warm. God, what were you, an idiot? 

Maybe so, but you were a pretty happy idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I FIXED MY EMDASH PROBLEM (they used to not copy over but that's just cos MS word is a piece of shit that whines to be updated or it will just eat its own shit)   
> also yes this ENTIRE chapter is my self-indulgent tribute to my mans jake peralta. *blows a kiss to the sky* lov u dude


	7. 7 - you find yourself with a goddamn unsatisfactory bitch of a situation

You pulled up to the front of Peter’s apartment. Again, you nearly razed your tires on the curb, but you were too tired to care about showing off your mediocre driving skills at this point. You killed the engine and tapped the steering wheel, sliding your hands up to 12 as you leant forwards. The car was now totally silent.

It wasn’t as if you like, _wanted_ to hold him in peace or anything. You just legitimately didn’t know what to say. You’d thought about it the whole ride back into Queens. Peter Parker, a little tiny boy (who, granted, was not that much younger than you, but _still_ ), as a superhero? Who was buddy-buddy with the Avengers, who quite literally save the world? Peter had… fucking _spider_ super powers? It was a lot to comprehend at 3 in the morning, where reality seems to be as distorted as it is in an empty Wal-Mart. So, the only coherent thing you could come up with was: 

“Okay, so like… what the _fuck_ is up with you?”

He shuffled uncomfortably. He hadn’t undone his seatbelt yet, but he was leaning a hard right into the door, like he was waiting for the perfect time to bolt off and vanish into the night. In fact, you wouldn’t be surprised if the asshole warped off using some magic time-space continuum manipulation or whatever. 

“I guess I should explain…”

With a deep breath, he told you about how a spider bite had given him heightened abilities, like hearing and sight as well as agility. He suspected that it’d been radioactive in some way, just like the Hulk’s powers, apparently, but he’d already been living with this for quite some time. It wasn’t too long ago that Tony Stark, Mr. Fucking $$$ Ironman, had approached him. There’d been some wildin’ wack-ass adventure in Germany. Captain America had gone rogue, there’d been a guy that could get really big or small, and there were some other Murderous Pals. But now he was home, having freshly rejected an offer to be an Avenger, and now he was trying to do a drug bust on Jordan (and friends).

“So… that’s that. I’m Spider-Man. Yep.”

“You know what you are?” you breathed after a moment. You turned to look at him, deadpan. “A fucking idiot.”

“Wh… what?” 

Clearly, his ego had gotten to him, and he boggled at you. You opened your mouth and went _off_.

“Jumping around Queens in a fucking super-suit?! Fighting crime—the _fuck_? You’re fifteen, for fuck’s sake! What the fuck!” You slammed your hand on the steering wheel, feeling your car feebly shake under you as you did. “What the hell kind of psycho are you? Don’t you worry about your friends? O-or your like, _Aunt_?”

“I-I mean,” he stammered, kind of pathetically in the face of your mental breakdown. “It’s what I’ve got to do…”

“Okay. Nope. I’m going to McFreaking lose it if I try to think about your weirdo _spider_ situation any longer so don’t you dare bring it up.” You inhaled shakily, letting your eyes drift shut. “Fine. What about the party? If you thought there was going to be drugs circulating, why didn’t you just call the cops? You seemed buddy-buddy enough with that Brooklyn one.”

“The cops would’ve never believed me,” he defended sharply. “And if they’d stormed the place, Flash’d get in trouble, and we’d only get the one person. It wasn’t just that one guy, either. There’s a bigger distributor up the line and I didn’t want to spook him. Whatever drug this is totally hooks people and then… they die. It’s worse than any opioids. It can’t go on…” he trailed off, losing passion when he remembered what you’d just been through. Guiltily, his eyes fell, and you watched him through a fan of dark lashes. “But I didn’t think he was going to pull a gun on you or Ned.”

“Yeah. Me and fuckin’ Ned.” You turned on him again, angrily. “What the fuck was the point of bringing us along if this was just going to be your vigilante wet dream?! Did you not think it could be dangerous? So much for getting Flash in trouble, you inconsiderate twat!”

“I didn’t…” He winced and then exhaled, like he had nothing else to lose, and ran a hand through his limp brown hair. “I never _wanted_ you guys there. But Ned was so excited that I just couldn’t tell him no.”

“…and _me_?”

He looked up, not quite getting your tone, and you shook your head with disbelief. Stupid tears were prickling the backs of your eyes. All this time you’d been thinking—hey, maybe somebody actually likes me for who I am! Somebody _wants_ to actually have me around! _Maybe I can finally call somebody a friend._

Well, shit. Looks like you got fooled. 

“Get out of my car, Peter.”

“H-Hey, wait. [Name], it’s not like that, I just—”

“Get out of my car!”

There was a shrill moment of silence that fell down heavily like a collapsed blanket fort. For a second you wondered if Peter was really going to do what you said, and for a second you hoped he wouldn’t—but you heard him quietly unbuckle his seatbelt and put his hand on the door. Low yellow light flooded the interior as he cracked it open. You clenched your teeth, faced forwards, and waited for him to leave so that you could scream to yourself in peace.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” he had the audacity to say in a husky whisper. “But… I do want your help. I think I need it, [Name]. So if you want to… you know, come by or text me. Any time. I think it’d be really cool.”

He opened the door and closed it gently after that. You refused to let yourself look up to see if he was looking back. After counting to one-hundred, you raised your head and breathed in a deep breath. Peter was gone at this point, but his presence lingered. 

“Dumb bitch,” you sighed. But it was directed at yourself.

\---

New York was definitely one of the worst cities to get around. Even at this ungodly hour, there were still meandering yellow cells clogging the veins of Queens, and it gave you a lot of time to think as you inched along the slick black roads. Did Peter _really_ need your help for his wack-o drug bust plan? Or was he just saying that to make you feel better after you got a boo-boo on your dumb feelings?

What could you even do? You sure didn’t have any special powers besides the ability to dissociate on command. It wasn’t as if you could start flipping around like Bruce Lee and arrest everybody single-handedly. You didn’t have telepathy, or the ability to breathe fire, or anything else cool. You couldn’t even use your tits as sex appeal like a Bond girl, seeing as you were a) not legal and b) not that hot. Maybe Pete just wanted to use you as a taxi. 

“Fuck!” you seethed at yourself, more disappointed than angry. You should be letting go and moving on, like you had the many years before. But no matter what you tried to think about, Peter kept floating back to mind, haunting you and plaguing the corner of your thoughts before you realized you were thinking about him again. Every time you acknowledged him in your head, your gut roiled emotionally. You were being as pathetic as all the whiny high school girls portrayed on B-List 90s movies. Oh, Christ. Soon you might start singing while crying in the rain.

You made an illegal turn, too tired to deal with road rules when all you wanted to do was lie down and cry yourself to sleep. But, as soon as you did, red and blue lit up the interior of your car and blinded you. You cussed loudly. Just your fat fuckin’ luck. Had the cops really been patrolling you so closely just for _this_?! Well, whatever. You could pay off any fines easily.

But as you braked and slowed down, you realized it wasn’t just one car—there had to be ten or twenty lined up down the block of your house. Your heart thudded anxiously, feeling as if it were slowly being filled up with cold tar. Uniformed cops swarmed like ants, looking very ghostly and immaterial as they blended into the dark. You swallowed thickly. 

This was a goddamn unsatisfactory bitch of a situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops it's been a while lol promise i in't forget bout my fave boy pete. but uh infinity war events don't and won't happen. at all. not in this fic at least because hhAH


	8. 8 - you run out of creative insults

A knock at your window nearly made you eject yourself out of the roof of the car. You were blinded by a flashlight, which moved aside to reveal an old white cop in its corona. Shakily you fumbled to lower your window.

“Step out of the vehicle, please.”

You felt kind of dizzy. Weren’t they supposed to like, ask for license and registration? What if you got arrested and like, Mirandized!? All for a shitty turn? You weren’t about to disobey the officer, though, and did as he asked with a dry mouth. He shone the light on your face and then gruffly scratched at one of his bushy eyebrows.

“You’re sure out late, Ms. [Name].”

“W… what?”

You hadn’t expected him to know your name, but he ignored you and reached down for a walkie-talkie strapped to his chest.

“Yeah, got her. Call it off.” He noticed the look of confusion on your face, finally, and shrugged. “Your folks sure were worried. A bit far from curfew, huh?”

“I don’t…” 

But it was starting to make sense. You couldn’t imagine your parents going this far for you, though. You really hadn’t even seen them since last week when they’d left for their business trip. You didn’t even know where they had really gone, for Christ’s sake. Your own parents were much more amiable with one of your cousins, who was a few years older and much more agreeable to taking over the business. None of your family was worth being friendly with, you thought. At most, your parents were your guardians. You didn’t really know what the word ‘family’ actually meant these days.

The cop went back to his car and a cacophony of slamming doors echoed through the grounds before they started peeling away, one-by-one. You stood, trembling, next to your own, watching them all drive away in slow organized fashion. It got darker as the number of headlights went down. The adrenaline was muddling your thoughts, and you couldn’t think of anything to do but stand there in the cold. Then something moved in your periphery with a bang and you jumped, before realizing it was the front door bursting open. Blurry figures were dark in the rays of gold light—two of them. 

“[Full Name]!” your mother shrilled, marching down the steps in slippers. You gawked. She was trampling the neatly kept, dewy grass in her designer shoes. Her hair looked like it had slipped sideways, the bobby pins and hairspray far out of place. “Where _have_ you been?!”

“I—um—”

“Young lady, you’ve given us a huge goddamn scare. No note? No message? What, you want us to wait for you to turn up dead in the river? It’s New York! What’s wrong with you!?”

Your father now. His hair was drooping a bit from tired gel, dark and unshowered. He was still in a fancy business suit, looking very out of place standing on a lawn at an ungodly hour of morning. You shied away from him only to face your mother on the other side.

“We’ve been calling, asking around—God, [Name], don’t you know what we’ve been through?!”

“Wh…” Her strained words finally broke clarity in your head and you stiffened your back, brow furrowing. “What _you’ve_ been through?”

“Yes!” your father remarked curtly. “Our only daughter, missing in a city like New York? We’ve—We’ve lost countless hours looking for your sorry self, when all you had to do was let one of the staff know where you’d be! None of them have known where you’ve been after school either, you know. Just because you refuse to let the drivers take you anywhere doesn’t give you free reign, [Name]. Think of our reputation! What’ll happen to us if something happens to you?”

“What will happen to _you_ if something happens to _me_?” you repeated, absolutely incredulous. Was he—this grown man that was your flesh and blood, your _father_ —telling you that something like your death would fuck up his _stocks_?

“Your father means we’ve been worried,” your mother said, but the redness in her face was only seeming to grow worse. “But he’s right. It’s been such unnecessary stress for us. I thought you knew better than to run around at night. Have you been drinking or smoking any of those… those _things_?”

“No,” you replied softly, feeling calmer than you expected. Calmer than you should be, actually. You looked at her face and then your father’s. “No. Dad, I’ve been at lacrosse practice every day after school. I’m co-captain. We’re a varsity team. We’ll probably play at a national level. But you wouldn’t know that. Mom, I went to a party. With _friends_. But you wouldn’t know who, because you don’t care. They’re boys, but we aren’t screwing or anything, if that’s what you think. I almost got shot today. There was this guy, a drug dealer, and he almost shot up me and my friend. We almost died. _I_ almost died. But you. Don’t. Care. And that’s okay now because I don’t really give a flying _fuck_ about either of you… you _fuckheads_ anymore, either!”

You got right back into your car and slammed the door. Your choice of insults weren’t exactly creative, and you inwardly cringed at yourself, but there was also a rush of exhilaration coursing through your blood. It was better than anything you’d ever felt—acing tests, scoring hat tricks, not losing your life tonight… you’d actually done and said that to them. For sixteen years you’d put up with indifference and apathy, and tonight you’d just called your folks fuckheads. Fucking _hell. Yeah._

Throwing a middle finger up, you reached down and threw your shitheap car into reverse. Your father took a step forwards as if he could stop you, but the coward flinched back when you flicked up your high beams. You grinned as he threw his arm up to protect his eyes.

“You’re not invited to my lacrosse games!” you screamed. Actual scream, at the top of your lungs kind of unrestraint scream. “You’re not invited to my graduation, my wedding, my funeral— _anything_! Hasta la vista, bitches!”

You floored the accelerator, spinning the wheel as rubber squealed on the asphalt. You could see them in your rear-view mirror, jaws on the ground as you sped off. It made you laugh. A weird, awkward smile at first, but then you were laughing, unabashedly _laughing_. 

All right. Maybe this life wasn’t so bad after all. Next stop: Peter Parker’s place.

After a dollar slice of pizza, first. Teenage rebellion really takes it out of you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heya it's sure been a hot minute. wasn't really spurred for anything until i saw spider-verse and suddenly ! love for all petes has rekindled. (been reignited? hoho) and just barely before 2018 closes, too. who said i didn't come in clutch.  
> s/o to my good friend paeonelle for being a muse and making me write for this again! (if you're also a hopeless thirster for peter b parker, read her fic, https://archiveofourown.org/works/17161904 "landmark". issa goodie.)  
> i think this'll have a fun ride. until endgame. but that shit didn't happen in this world so all smiles... all smiles.  
> thanks for reading! :)


	9. 9 - you embody kevin mccalister (before the franchise went to shit)

You knew Peter was Gen Z garbage like you and that his phone was probably on silent. Plus, he’d probably resent you for calling, but you didn’t feel like you had a choice. You weren’t about to buzz his aunt awake at this hour, when he was probably already in deep shit. You couldn’t remember his door code and it’d probably set off a riot if you just waltzed through the front door, anyways. Your car was too old for a Bluetooth connection, so you parked first before pulling your phone out. A call makes a more urgent deal than a text, so you dialled him. Waiting for the ring tone made your heart leap into your mouth. Should you be this nervous about a stupid phone call?

To your surprise he picked up on the third ring, just before it was going to go to voicemail. “[Name]?” he asked, groggily in a way that sounded like he’d just rolled over in bed. “Whass happening, you okay?”

“Hey, remember when you said I should come over any time?” you said frantically, feeling like you had to justify yourself as quickly as you could. “After I yelled at you. Well, now’s ‘any time’. Sorry. But uh, some shit happened at home so I can’t really stay there…”

You were realizing how dumb you sounded as you talked. This is why people text, goddammit! You had real time to figure out the right nuances then! Here you were, stranded in New York like Kevin Mc-Fucking-Callister, begging to be let into an underclassman boy’s house. What kind of weirdo were you? You should’ve bunkered down in a hotel somewhere for the night and then waited until morning when both you and Peter had time to sleep on things before bringing this shit up. But you were still riding adrenaline, so it had genuinely seemed like a good idea to just show up.

“Oh, y-yeah! Yeah, I can uh…” Rustling. He was rolling off the bed. “Um, do you think you can come up through the fire escape? It’s a bit noisy if I have to open the front door because of the security system...”

“Wait, you’re actually going to let me in?” What kind of weirdo was _he_? Though you guessed he had an alter-ego named Spider-man, so maybe you should be taking anything Peter said or did with a grain of salt.

“Yeah! Yeah, um, my light’s on. Just tap on the window.”

“Hey, Pete? Peter?”

“What?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“You’re the best.”

“Oh. Ha, um… Thanks.” 

You couldn’t see him, and yet you felt the embarrassed grin stretch across his face anyways. Or maybe you just hoped he was doing the same as you.

\---

You used every last bit of athleticism you had to not rattle the fire escape on your way up, knowing anybody else at home would freak the fuck out if they heard somebody climbing around at a prime crime time. You know you would’ve. Good for you, because nobody in a nightgown came out to scream profanities at you. You made it up to the right floor, from what you remembered, and saw the dim glow behind translucent curtains. Nervously, you tapped on it with a knuckle.

Peter’s face appeared soon enough and he lifted the window up, letting you climb in. You shivered. After all, you were still in your party clothes, and it was fucking frigid out there. It was a miracle your makeup hadn’t melted off of your face. Shout out to that setting spray. Peter had changed into flannel PJs and an old plain white t-shirt, looking like a very normal guy, and very not everything-crazy-he-was (like being Spider-Man).

“Hey,” he said, a bit awkwardly as you brushed brick dust off your black skirt. He scratched the back of his neck reflexively, it looked, running his hand through his hair. “So uh… what happened?”

“Right. I, uh, changed my mind… I guess.” You looked up at him, his face shadowed by the single light, making him look so much older and mature. Your eyes fell. “I’m sorry for yelling at you like that. I just didn’t know what to think. It’s a lot.”

“What? Oh, no—no, I totally deserved that. It’s fine! Don’t apologize.”

“But I want to help! You. Um, with that drug bust plan you have. I want to do something meaningful. And good.” 

Your brain was broken and you were just spitting shit out, you knew. But you’d been up for far too long, and your kidneys were just about ready to fail with all the emotions and hormones that had coursed through you in the span of a few hours, and you were just ready to collapse. Peter seemed to understand and then gestured to his bed, which only had room for one.

“Do you, uh, want to take the bed for the night? Or change? I-I don’t have any girl clothes, but I’m sure my aunt has something around…?”

He was shy about it, averting his gaze. You found the energy to laugh. 

“No, I’m perfectly fine on the floor. I don’t have to change either. I’m just thankful you let me in. I should’ve waited until, tomorrow, but I called my parents fuckheads so… oops.”

“You called your parents _fuckheads_?”

“Yeah, well, I was tired!” you defended weakly. He shook his head but didn’t press it further, instead, hiding a slanted smile by biting his lip.

“But are you sure? I’ll feel bad if I just left you on the ground without changing…” 

You nodded, bunching up your jacket to act as a pillow. Demonstrating how comfortable you were, you lay down and yawned widely.

“I might be a rich kid, but it’s not like you have to spoil me to accommodate me. Good night, Peter.”

“Yeah, okay… good night, [Name].” He seemed to sense that was the end of the story and turned off the light, letting darkness flood the room. You were so genuinely exhausted that you would’ve fallen asleep right there if you hadn’t felt something wrap around you. Groggy, you cracked open an eye to see Peter’s chest. Without any more effort than he’d have lifting a marshmallow, he scooped you up and tucked you into his bed. It was still faintly warm from when he’d been lying here. He fixed the blanket so that it covered your whole body, up to your chin. When you felt him leave, you opened your bleary eyes and saw him curl up on the ground where you had been, back facing you. His bed smelt so strongly of him it practically enveloped you, and you didn’t even have enough strength to hold onto consciousness long enough to say thank you.

**Author's Note:**

> (Read) Elsewhere: https://goo.gl/JJ2zNY


End file.
